The Florida Joker is back, this time to tell Rockstar he’s not going to sue over a character in GTA 6 anymore. Rather, he’d very much like to voice the character instead.

First, some background. Lawrence Sullivan — aka the Florida Joker — had complained about the GTA 6 trailer by threatening a lawsuit against developer Rockstar Games unless he was paid.

GTA 6 takes place in the state of Leonida, Rockstar’s version of Florida, and following the release of the record-breaking debut trailer fans noticed several real-life references. Among them was what appeared to be a reference to Sullivan, a tattoo model who garnered plenty of online attention after his mugshot went viral in 2017. He earned the nickname Florida Joker due to his green hair and face tattoos.

The GTA 6 version, seen in a quick shot of news footage, is a bit different — purple hair instead of green, some different face tattoos — but the similarities are certainly hard to ignore, which Sullivan didn’t. He acknowledged the GTA 6 video in a TikTok posted last year, and then posted a follow-up demanding millions of dollars in compensation.

In that TikTok, Sullivan appeared with purple-dyed hair to ape the GTA 6 character more closely. “GTA, I’m giving you the biggest free marketing you got in the entire history of running this GTA game,” he said. “For that, I want an extra million dollars. Y’all taking forever to respond back to me. GTA we gotta talk.”

Then, Sullivan said: “You think I’m playin? You got three days… three days before my lawyers go crazy on this case. I got hard evidence.” IGN had asked Rockstar to comment on Sullivan’s claims, but didn’t hear back. In a previous TikTok, Sullivan demanded up to $2 million from Rockstar Games over the character’s appearance in the trailer. “Florida Joker ain’t having that,” he said, “y’all took my likeness, y’all took my life.”

Now, Sullivan has taken to TikTok once again, this time singing a different tune. “GTA, Rockstar, Take-Two, we gotta talk,” Sullivan said. “I’m not suing y’all no more, but y’all still out your goddamn nuggets. It’s been two whole months. Y’all still haven’t reached out to me. Still haven’t DM’d me. Let’s do what’s right. Show me like $50,000, $100,000. Let me voice the character, let me go to the meet-and-greets when the game is released, sign, take pictures with the fans. Come on man, we make worldwide news, every blog. Every news outlet covered me on the game. Everyone knows who I am, trust me. So GTA, Rockstar, we gotta talk.”

Sullivan then goes on to say perhaps the silliest thing he’s said throughout this entire saga: “I’m making the game more relevant. People want to play it. I’m the reason the game is so hype right now.”

Despite Sullivan’s various TikToks, it seems unlikely he will get anything out of Rockstar Games. Last year Roger Clark, the voice actor behind Red Dead Redemption 2 protagonist, Arthur Morgan, warned Sullivan from taking on the might of Rockstar. “They’re [Rockstar Games] not going to talk to you,” he said in a since-deleted TikTok.

“They’ve had people like you trying to sue them for decades. They are lawyered up, man. They know exactly what they can and cannot get away with. If I were you, I would use the notoriety they just threw your way to your advantage. Capitalize on it somehow. You ain’t getting a job at Home Depot with that face.”

Sullivan’s TikToks are only the latest development in what’s been a whirlwind since the leak, and then the official launch, of the hotly anticipated GTA 6 trailer. It broke YouTube viewership records and spurred a number of theories as fans eagerly await the game’s 2025 release, although PC gamers will have to wait.

This week, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said he expects a GTA 6 release sometime after March 2025. This is notably a little later than what some have been speculating based on past remarks by Take-Two Interactive, GTA 6’s publisher.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Hideo Kojima has returned to his once dormant YouTube channel, HideoTube, after seven years to discuss Death Stranding 2, his recently announced return to the action-espionage genre, and to talk openly about a difficult time he went through during the height of the pandemic.

During the PlayStation State of Play January 2024 showcase, Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima announced his return to the action-espionage genre with a video game and movie hybrid codenamed Physint that’ll have “near life-like graphics”.

We don’t know much about Physint, but what we do know suggests a PlayStation 6 launch is a distinct possibility. During State of Play, Kojima said production is expected to begin “in earnest” at Kojima Productions after Death Stranding 2 and in partnership with Sony.

In the new video, Kojima again bigged up Physint’s visuals. “It will be both a game and a movie at the same time,” he said. “That’s why we were at Sony Pictures. A new action-espionage game. Of course, it will be a game. However, if your mother walks in and sees you playing this game, she’ll think you’re watching a movie. I’m not sure how far we can take it yet.”

Kojima is of course famous for his fancy cutscenes and hyper-detailed character models. The way he’s talking about Physint, it sounds like we can expect another leap in visuals.

Kojima then went on to discuss why he decided to make Physint, pointing to the many requests he’s had to make another Metal Gear game. “… because I became independent, I wanted to do something new with my own IP,” he said. “So to challenge myself, I first made DS. Then, to create a franchise, I made DS2. And I wanted to do something even newer, so I started working on OD. And since then, there have been a lot of new ideas. But in the last eight years, every day on social media, from users all around the world, people have been asking me to create another Metal Gear and stuff like that.”

Kojima then talked about a moment in 2020 during the pandemic when he became so ill he had to have surgery and even wrote a will. It sounds like a serious moment in the life of the 60-year-old, so much so that he considered leaving video game development behind. But it was a message from Hollywood director Guillermo del Toro, who starred in Death Stranding, that Kojima credits as “saving” him.

“I fell ill in 2020,” Kojima said. “It was also during the pandemic, so I was sick and isolated during all of it. I even had surgery. And I thought, ‘I can’t anymore.’ I was at my lowest and felt like I couldn’t go back to making games. I wrote a will, too. And in that moment, I realised that people die. But, I turned 60 last year. I’ll turn 70 in 10 years. I hope to never retire.

“Having said that, if the users desire it so much, I thought I should change my priorities a bit. I still want to do new things, but I decided to make an action-espionage game. I get many requests from Hollywood to make films, but I’ve refused them. Because I have my own company now, I can’t leave for one or two years to go make a movie. The company would collapse. I was in a tough spot.

“And I talked to Guillermo del Toro about it. And he said, ‘Hideo, what you’re making is already a movie. Keep going as you are.’ His words saved me.

“And since we’ll be working with many creators in the business, though the output is a game, it won’t be too different from movies.”

Kojima’s video is worth a watch as it goes into more detail on Death Stranding 2, revealing various story and character details while retaining much of the mystery he’s famous for fostering.

It’s a busy time for Kojima, who is working on Death Stranding 2, OD for Microsoft, and Physint for Sony. There’s also an untitled Death Stranding film in the works.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

A Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League player has unearthed a hidden message that looks like a strong hunt at the return of a crucial character.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League spoilers follow.

In Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Harley Quinn kills a mind-controlled Batman in what has proven to be one of the most controversial story moments in Rocksteady’s looter shooter. This is the Batman from Rocksteady’s much-loved Arkhamverse, and so the cutscene sparked a vociferous debate about the character’s demise.

That, many players thought, was that. But could Batman return? A new video from Batman Arkham Videos suggests Batman is set for a return. As detailed in the video, Suicide Squad players can find 12 calendars throughout Metropolis, each highlighting a specific date. Importantly, the calendar for December features a bat symbol on the marked day, and is found in the location of a crucial Batman scene.

While this Easter egg appears to be the work of Batman supervillain Calendar Man, it is very much about Batman himself. As Batman Arkham Videos worked out, is that converting the dates into letters based on the day of the month, and sorting each letter in order by month, they spell out a hidden message: “He will return.”

As you’d expect, the discovery has caused the Suicide Squad community to excitedly predict how Batman might return. On the face of it, it seems unlikely (he was shot in the head after all). But there are all sorts of theories beyond the simple, ‘this is a comic book story so superheroes never die’ explanation. For example, some theorise the Justice League characters who are killed in the game are clones created by Brainiac, and the original characters are holed up somewhere for safekeeping. Another theory suggests multiverse shenanigans, which may or may not mean Batman from another universe turns up to save the day. Some even reckon the entire game takes place in an alternate universe separate from previous Arkham games.

There’s more: datamining has shown strong hints that Flash and Green Lantern are set to return in some form, so adding Batman to the list wouldn’t be a big reach. Officially, all we know is that Joker is set to arrive in Suicide Squad as a playable character. Other characters suspected to be on their way include Mrs Freeze (Nora Fries), Lawless, and Deathstroke.

But it’s the return of Batman that would be the highest-profile change, given how Suicide Squad’s story has gone down with some. Developer Rocksteady and publisher Warner Bros. have yet to comment.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Helldivers 2 has become Sony’s biggest ever game launch on Steam, despite a ‘mixed’ reception from players.

Arrowhead Game Studios’ cooperative action game is published by Sony Interactive Entertainment across PS5 and PC via Steam. While Sony does not publish player numbers for PlayStation games, Valve does for Steam games. Yesterday, February 8, Helldivers 2 launched big on Steam with a peak concurrent player count of 81,840. That puts it ahead of Sony Santa Monica’s God of War, which enjoyed a peak concurrent player count of 73,529 when it launched on PC two years ago, according to SteamDB.

.@helldivers2 is now the most concurrently played game on Steam published by @PlayStation at 81k players.

Previous record was God of War at 73k players. pic.twitter.com/Ki0cJtdi4n

— SteamDB (@SteamDB) February 9, 2024

Helldivers 2’s PC success comes despite it launching day-and-date alongside the PS5 version, which is an unusual but not unprecedented strategy for Sony. Sony published IllFonic’s Predator: Hunting Grounds, for example, across PS4 and PC on the same day in April 2020. Helldivers 2 is also the top-selling game by revenue on Steam, ahead of smash hits such as Palworld and Call of Duty. It’s worth noting Helldivers 2 is not a full-price game but cheaper at $39.99.

Whether Sony might be willing to relax its policy for its big first-party exclusives remains to be seen. The recently released Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is not available on PC and Sony has yet to announce a PC version. Shift Up’s eye-catching action game Stellar Blade is down for release on PS5 only, as is Team Ninja’s Rise of the Ronin. Concord, a brand new PvP multiplayer first-person shooter from Firewalk Studios, is due to launch on PS5 and PC.

Despite Helldivers 2’s Steam success, it has a ‘mixed’ user review rating, with some users pointing out performance problems that are causing issues on PC. Arrowhead has released a patch to Steam that appears to have eased matchmaking issues for PC as well as some crash issues.

“We know there’s more to solve, and we’re working our way through it,” Game Director Mikael Eriksson said. “Nevertheless, we hope this rapid patch goes a long way to making your experience better.

“Now go smash some bugs (and bots)!”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Cardy, Matt, and Jesse have been blowing loads up aliens up in Helldivers 2 and having a bloody laugh doing it, too. There’s also a big delve into the first couple of chapters of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and whether it lives up to the high standards of Remake. Plus, there’s also plenty of time to look back at Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, chat about True Detective: Night Country, natter about The Iron Claw, and break huge chocolate biscuit news.

Get in touch at ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.

IGN UK Podcast 735: Helldiving into Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

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